Usually, everyone at Temple Health-Chestnut Hill Hospital works together as a team. But on December 11th, it was each employee for themselves as our staff members competed against one another in our first-ever campus bake-off!
“It started as a bit of a joke,” says Boris Tsypenyuk, the hospital’s Director of Performance Excellence. “One of our Physical Therapists, Joe Fay, reportedly makes great cakes, and so does Betty Shannon, President & CEO Rich Newell’s Executive Assistant. I was kidding around, and I said, ‘One of you has to make the better cakes.’ And so we decided to have a bake-off.’”
News of the contest spread around the hospital, and more and more employees became interested in getting involved. “People were saying, ‘Hey, I can bake too.’ And we were telling them, ‘Bring it on. Come on through,’” says Executive Administrative Assistant Christina Camacho, who helped organize the bake-off.
To ensure there would be enough cake to go around, the judging panel was limited to leadership (and a few employees who stopped by at just the right time). Five Chestnut Hill employees—Kellyanne Price, Kevin Smith, Joan Scanlon, plus Faye and Shannon themselves—entered their cakes into the contest. All submissions were required to be pound cakes (“So we could judge apples to apples,” as Tsypenyuk puts it).
In the end, it was Shannon’s cake that came out on top—but for Tsypenyuk, the contest itself was a win. “My measure of success is that people want us to have more bake-offs,” he says. “We’re planning on holding a cookie bake-off in February, for Valentine’s Day, and it’s going to be much bigger.”
“Even during this bake-off, people were saying, ‘Oh, I can’t make pound cake—can we do cookies next time?’ Or, ‘Can we do pie?’” Camacho adds. “People were really excited: they love the idea of camaraderie, but also friendly competition. And you probably didn’t know your coworkers had that much talent. It’s a nice way to see people in a different light and to bring everyone together.”
